"What characterizes Japanese art is its obsession with lines," says Sumie Jones.

The Indiana University professor of Japanese and comparative literature is the lead-off lecturer for the College Women's Association of Japan's annual lecture series, which will be held Feb. 26-27 and March 6-7, on this year's theme of "Line in Japanese Art." Six leading figures from the arts and academia will address the theme from varying standpoints; Jones's keynote lecture Feb. 26 will provide "An Overview of Line and Its Use in Japanese Arts."

Few arts are more dependent on line than calligraphy, and the second lecture, "The Aristocratic Beauty of Line in Kana," will be given the morning of Feb. 27 by leading calligrapher and Gotoh Museum chief curator Akira Nagoya.

In the third lecture the afternoon of Feb. 27, Mary Stewart, professor of art history at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, and the New School for Social Research in New York, will find affinities in "Line in Japanese and Gothic Architecture."

The lectures continue the evening of March 6 with one of England's leading experts on Edo Period culture, Timon Screech, a graduate of both Oxford and Harvard and now a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Screech will examine line in painting in "The Unbroken Line From Emakimono Scrolls Through Ukiyo-e Prints to Modern Manga Illustrations."

Contemporary Japanese industrial design has conquered the world, and designer Kenji Ekuan has designed everything from the familiar Kikkoman cruet-bottle to the Komachi Shinkansen. He will speak the morning of March 7 on "Tradition and Contemporary Times: The Aesthetic of the Japanese Lunchbox."

The final lecture the afternoon of March 7 will be by art historian Shuji Takashina, who has both studied and taught at the University of Tokyo, the University of Paris and the Sorbonne. His lecture, "The Art of Representation in Japan and the West," will try to define the characteristics of each tradition and show the influences of Japanese art on European artists of the 19th century.

Tickets are available for individual lectures at 2,500 yen (students 2,000 yen), in advance or at the door. Series tickets covering all six lectures are 12,000 yen (students 11,000 yen).